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Planet Discovered with a Massive Core
helioquake writes "A collaboration of astronomers discovers possible a 'Rossetta Stone' of planetary formation study, reported by San Francisco State Univerity and Subaru Observatory. This new planet, orbiting around G-star like our Sun (HD 149026), weighs roughly equal to that of Saturn, while its size is significantly smaller in diameter. Planetary modeling suggests that the core of the planet alone must have 70 times more mass than Earth, indicating the possible existence of a metallic solid core inside the planet. Just like the rocky planet discovered earlier, the finding of this dense-core planet may lead to better understading of the formation of rockey planets in the Universe."
I'd say it's time for IPX to head out and start mining that core. There's probably quite a bit of rare minerals in it.
...since "weight" is a measure of gravitational pull on an object? Have denser mass, sure, but weight? Weird.
how do they determine the weight/mass of a planet that's that far away? Or is it more of just a guess based on what light it refracts/emits/absorbs?
That's what all the Planets say!
Android Software Engineer
Call me when they discover a giant planet, with a metallic core outside the planet. That's the armored base from which they keep sending us aliens like Ann Coulter and Tom Cruise. Then we just drop magnet-tipped nukes into space, and finally it's safe to watch TV again.
--
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It's too bad that the only planets we can reliably locate at this time are the freaky-deeky ones that are too massive, too close to their primary, or are in orbits far too elliptical to give life a decent chance...each new system looks like a good example of how not to design a solar system capable of sustaining life.
Hopefully, this will change when the interferometer goes up around 2015.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
The beast planet is coming
did you forget to take your meds?
"the finding of this dense-core planet may lead to better understading of the formation of rockey planets in the Universe."" YES, I've been waiting for some advancement in this area for years!
[nt]
- doctea
Heavy Metal planets are so Hard Core.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
I'm gonna wait for the JoeIsuzu Observatory to confirm this before I believe it.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Managerium
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
What else would be significantly smaller? The color?!?!?!
Why the hell do people write crap like "larger in size" or "darker in color" anyway?:
...Scientists at Tom's Astrophysics Guide and Ars Astra estimate that this new massive core planet is still capable of outperforming the latest Intel dual core planets by up to 20% in the all-important Halo 2 benchmark.
A solid metallic core that's 70 times more dense than liquid rock? That's some kind of metal I'd like to know more about.
Of course, maybe our planet is so light because its core is filled with million-year-old Martian war machines that are flimsy enough to be damaged by current weapons.
Martians have journeyed millions of miles to attack a crane operator and his neighbors (and if they're not Martians, they journeyed a lot farther).
--- Roger Ebert
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"There are two competing theories for giant planet formation: planets form from fragmentation of a contracting dense cloud, or planets start as small rock-ice cores and grow as they gravitationally acquire additional mass. The large core of this planet couldn't have formed by the first model."
You will have to excuse my ignorance here, but from my understanding, the accretion phase of the Nebular Theory explains that as things planets form as a collection of interstallar mass collecting and colliding in the post Proto-Star phase. And I was under the impression that the Nubeluar Theory, with the Giant Impact Theory thrown in to explain bizzare occurances that could not be explained (such as the off axis of Earth, Venus, and Uranus). Now only being an amature, thats my understanding of it. And how does this planet differ from any other planet they have found, excluding its density.
One time this science guy comes up to me and says "did you know the earth revolves around the sun?" and I'm like "you dumbass, look up at the sky. see the sun revolving around us?"
Besides, if the planet rotated around the sun it would have to move pretty fucking fast, and we'd all get blown off.
I wonder when planetary scientists will get a better picture of what's out there. The current observation techniques only pick up outrageously heavy planets with close orbits. Yes, I know this is inevitable given that the detection methods cue in on gravitational and occultation effects.
Once we can detect an Earth-sized planet in a 1 AU orbit, we should get a much better idea of the actual prevalence of Earths and the fraction of solar systems "like ours."
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Let's give Bruce Willis and crew another tax break to launch up there and drill into that sucker! If anyone can drill it, they can. It said so on tv.
AMD vows to release planet with dual massive cores by end of '05. Intel responds by renegotiating contracts with its distributors.
What's up with astronomers making outlandish claims based on the flimiest of evidence. There's a dozen or so other things than a dense core that would have shown up the same on their model. They have no way of knowing that a dense core, rather than, for example, a dense planet is causing the motions.
/. scientists saying "omg teh dakr spot! tere must be teh lakezorz!" http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/2 9/1610223&tid=160&tid=14
And this isn't new. Just a few days ago, we saw on
And remember the "scientists" who said "gee, there's sediment at the bottom of basins on Mars. 100% chance there was water there in Mars's history!"
Whatever happened to scientific restraint? Whatever happened to waiting for the right evidence?
could survive. The Mole People. We have discovered their secret planet.
I did not RTFA yet, but unless helioquake did a copy and paste from the FA then I'd suggest he, and editor Zonk (wtf good is an editor if he doesn't edit, ah?) go read this article as published on Slashdot. You know, that whole grammar thing? ;)
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Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
Excuse me, but did you just shoot down the whole concept of Intelligent Design of the Universe?
Oops, you used big bad evil Science. That's not fair! Just go away now because we don't want to talk to you any more.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
How much can we model to show what an environment like this is like? That planet's magnetosphere must be fierce. There must be a lot of side effects from that, both for it and any moons it may have.
Actually, we do.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Well, this is amazing news that we're hearing from Subaru Observatory. Now that this is all done with, I really have a sudden urge to buy a car...
:
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"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Anything's weight could be roughly equal to that of Saturn, given the correct gravitational force! I think mass would be a better unit in this example.
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begin mining! We could trash a bunch of other planets, stripping them of their natural resources.
It's easy to stand out when the general level of competence is so low.
RTFA, maybe even just read the entire post, and you'll find that there is no mention of this having anything to do with planets we'll be able to "live on," or colonizing, or space travel, or anything like that. It's a matter of figuring out the inner workings of how planets form, and yes, there may be hundreds of other planets just like this one, but this is the one that has been found and that's all that matters, and if you had read any of the post or articles, or just thought about what you were saying for a few seconds, you would realize that the age of what we're seeing has absolutly no relevance to the importance of this find. RTFA!!!
I suspect you never will "get it".
Thanks for the insightful commentary.
I have a massive core but no one ever writes about me.
That's no planet... that's a space station.
Holy crap, scientists have found the Death Star.
Umm No. Intelligent Design theory does not state nor imply that every single solar system in the universe be one capable of supporting human-like life. Merely that the variety and complexity of our universe is so great as to belie the possibility of it being totally random. So actually, having a funky goofy solar system such as this one supports the concept of Intelligent Design.
Now stop trolling, you silly.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
The page talks about the history of detecting the planets and the various methods used.
Err... no, I'd say he's providing evidence that points to either conclusion. 3 Options: We got lucky, and we happen to have evolved in the only viable solar system; We don't have sufficient technology to spot the other viable systems, and any life there has not had a chance to evolve; or there is a God, and (s)he has created a universe full of wondrous creation, of which we are a small speck. Remember this, if you would: A true scientist/intellectual forms a hypothesis, tests it, and discards it only when it has been conclusively proved to be false - and the existence of God may very well be the ultimate unprovable in the universe. Just because some people are fanatical about it doesn't necessarily make it false; that just makes it popular. To ignore the possibility of God is as grave a crime against science as the Church's condemning of Galileo's work.
And co-orbital planets probably wouldn't last long. An exception to this are asteroid belts. However, in general, two (or n) planets would show up as different frequencies in the wobble of the star. The magnitude of each frequency gives you a lower limit on the mass of the star. You can only get a true measure (as opposed to a limit) by also knowing the inclination of the planets' orbit relative to our line of sight.
Ben Hocking
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The mass of the star, based on interpolation of stellar evolutionary models, is 1.3+-0.1 M[Sun]; together with the Doppler amplitude, K1 = 43.3 m/s, we derive a planet mass, M sin(i) = 0.36 M[Jup], and orbital radius of 0.042 AU.
Let's go Hurricanes!!! 2006 Stanley Cup Champions!!!
I mean "lower limit on the mass of the planets".
Ben Hocking
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It has a "massive" core, that is fine. But what really matters: does this planet pose a threat? Our weapons are armed and ready.
Just like the rocky planet discovered earlier, the finding of this dense-core planet may lead to better understading of the formation of rockey planets in the Universe."
I think this is a very interesting result to be sure, but I think I would like to see it confirmed. I am a little concerned that perhaps there may be something wrong with their analysis. I am familiar with this kind of work and there are a lot of places where errors can creep into the analysis and give spurious results. I hope that their discovery stands up, but I'm not convinced, yet.
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That may be Offtopic...but it sounds mighty tasty.
And if you'd like respond to me or flame for this, please go here http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/30/15 32238&tid=215&tid=4 to argue.
Actually the "funky goofy solar system" neither confirms nor disproves either theory. It is simply another data point. Up until recently we had only one system to observe and we are now finding out that other systems are different from ours. Why this is a suprise, I do not know.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
I didn't RTFA, but the original post says 70 times the mass, not that it is 70 times more dense. It also states that the planet is about the size of Saturn which has a diameter of about 10 times Earths, which in turn means 1000 times the volume. So it seems it would be much less dense then Earth.
Exactly! Do we really need to know the inner workings of a planet and how they form when there are bigger things to worry about? I'm just saying that this branch of science may be useful one day, but there are bigger problems to deal with in the area of space immediately surrounding us and on the planet we still live on. Last time I checked there are a lot of people dying from cancer, AIDS, warfare, and other problems we've got. Don't you think the brilliant minds looking for planets could be better put to use solving the more serious problems we're facing now?
I read enough of TFA to realize that it wasn't really worth finishing. There wouldn't be any useful information I could apply to my life, just some trivial information about this particular planet and some ideas scientists have about planetary formation. I fail to see how this information can in any way be applied to make the world a better place at the current time.
This information may prove useful at some point in time and perhaps it will be of great benefit to humanity. However, this will be long after I'm dead and gone.
Go ahead and flame me if you want. Mod me insightful, a troll, or redundent, but I'm just voicing my opinion on the matter.
Don't they test these planets before they deliver?!?
Oh well, let's gdb that core and do a stack trace...
...if they have crappy movies about their core too. Poor bastards.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
to strip mine *that*.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
weighs roughly equal to that of Saturn
Last time I checked, everything weighed equal to Saturn. About 0 lbs.
"For Great Justice."
Someone needs to do a >strings core and see what happened, probably just a overloaded chinese server, you know, 'cause of all the screening of western sites they are doing these days.
#include bier;
This is the planet that has been found. There are thousands more, but this one has been found. You most likely are not so interested in the planet that has been found, and probably would be more interested in the closer planets you see up top there, where you can customize those planets, change those planets, or just click pretty widgets to kill time.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
So let's get to work on figuring out how to get around in space faster before we bother looking for things that might be worth getting to.
We are working on how to get around. Are you saying that until we figure that out perfectly that we should stop looking? That there's no point in seeing anything if we can't get to it?
The first planet ever discovered by humans outside our solar system occured in our lifetime. Considering how long humans have been around, and that only now these discoveries are being made, you want to just stop looking because we haven't seen the perfect planet yet and we can't get there anyway?
How about giving the kids in science class today some inspiration for what they are doing, instead of saying that what they are doing is useless?
I never bought that bit about the complexity of the universe denying it happening randomly. It seems to be that people who say it have no idea how truely massive the universe is. The estimate is something like 70 sextillion stars in the universe, and we've already simulated in the lab how the building blocks of life can spontaneously arise. The odds of life occuring randomly in this universe (other than earth even) are huge.
The reason it's flawed is because science is unpredictable. We dont really know where, and when the next great discovery is really going to take place or how that discovery will affect us. For all we know, this discovery may be laying the ground work for something truly amazing, but neither you nor I know.
Think of it this way. A little over 200 hundred years ago, people were just starting to play around with electricity. At the time, it was really little more than an intellectual curiosity and nobody had any idea that it would lead to anything useful. Fast forward 200 years, and most of us can't survive without it. That's how most science has worked. A seeming innocuous discovery is made that is later found to completely change how we make our way in the world.
That is why it is reasonable to hedge our bets and pursue lines of research that may not have immediate outcomes. Aren't you glad that Schroedinger and his cronies developed the field of quantum mechanics that made modern computers possible, even though it had a little practical benefit to them during their lifetimes?
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If you have no interst in the universe outside your basement you probably won't get excited. However if you happen to be an astrophysicist or even have a remote interest in new discoveries then you might just find this interesting, because we've never seen anything like this before.
The planet in question posses the largest known core of any known extrosolar planet. So what? you say, well this just happens to be the first observational evidence supporting a planetary formation theory known as core accretion. So thanks to this observation confirming the theory, we now know that there should be a lot more of these planets. And as such a little bit more about the universe around us.
But of course because we cant get there tommorow this sort of work is a waste of time.... Tell you what, why don't you return to your cave and I'll send you an email when we've invented warp drive and found another planet. Then you can go live on it and the rest of us can waste out time with these boring discoveries.
Actually that only gives you the weight of the Earth (as caused by your gravitational attraction). In order to determine it's mass you must divide the weight of the Earth by the acceleration due to your own mass.
So, if you know your mass without consulting the Earth's gravitational pull (which would require that you know the Earth's mass), you're set. If not, you must use an object of known mass to measure the Earth's mass, from which you can then calculate your own.
And yet, I understand you were being funny. But what strikes me as funny is that this approach actually works!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Earth First, we'll stripmine the other planets later.
"all i wanted was a pepsi..."
Those bastard scientists - studying things that interest them. We should round them up and force to study more practical things... you know... your onto something there... but why stop at scientists? I say we round up all the programmers and make them do something useful like farming while we're at it. Why waste their time making video games, when they could be growing crops for hungry Africans?
We all dream of a metal ground and string winds!
g ames/ta/screenshots/images/13.jpg
http://www.planetannihilation.com/image.asp?src=/
Looks like the core of that planet would be a good start toward building a Dyson Sphere.
http://xs4.xs.to/pics/04481/p556222.gif
Hundreds of others like this one, lol.
There are something like 70 sextillion stars out there. I'm sure for every new type of planet we find, there are trillions of examples out there. Probably thousands if not millions just within our own galaxy. The point isn't that it's a unique planet or anything, just that it's the first of it's kind that we've found. It expands our knowledge of solar system formation and will help us to find the earthlike worlds that you seem to think are the only important ones.
Is that the Rossetta Stone of Lavender Nun fame ?
Or do you mean Rosetta ?
First, you say it your self, this may be useful one day. The immediate concerns you have with cancer, AIDS, warfare, and other problems, the work being done on those now didn't just spontaneously come out of nowhere. It's built on research that was done before, and others probably claimed at the time it was pointless because it didn't address immediate concerns.
Who's to say that by having a better understanding of how planets are formed, we won't develop a better understanding of our planet. Maybe by studying this planet in the future, we can develop better earthquake models (given the uniqueness of its core.) The earthquakes we have around the world seems to be an immediate concern to me.
Try to think a little bit ahead of what you can immediately see. I know some people who only focus on immediate concerns. The are constantly addressing those, but because they don't take the time to look beyond that, they deal with a constant stream of problems.
I read enough of TFA to realize that it wasn't really worth finishing. There wouldn't be any useful information I could apply to my life, just some trivial information about this particular planet and some ideas scientists have about planetary formation.
I'm curious, how many articles on Slashdot have useful information that applies to your life?
Yeah, you're voicing your opinion, and others are disagreeing with you, so don't throw that up as some protection for argument. Note, I'm not the AC grandparent.
The concept of a "Rosetta Stone" in a generic discovery of signifigance. Rosetta Stone referes to a tablet that had a simultaneous translation of Heiroglyphics, Latin, and Greek, that allowed linguists to finally start cracking the secrets of the ancient Egyptian's written Language.
This specimin that takes science in a new direction is more akin to "Mercury's Orbit."
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
With a sample size of only nine (and those only studied close up with a handful of sensing devices) you've determined which planets are and are not suitable for life.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Space flight once needed funding from the government to get kick started, but there are a lot of people in the private sector getting in on the action. Hopefully, NASA or other companies involved with space flight/exploration will be able to sustain themselves based on the fact that they provide a product or service society thinks is worth paying for.
Programmers are generally doing something useful though, so using them is a little off. Even though some people would argue that Microsoft programmers are useless or should be doing something better with their time, society is buying Microsoft products which justify what they are doing. They can stand on their own, so either what they do is of value or society is stupid.
The line gets blurred more when you deal with things like video games. To some they are considered an art form. They're not really adding anything practical, but they add to the culture of society. You could attempt to pass them off as a form of entertainment if nothing else. True, they could better apply their time and effort to doing something more useful for society, but once again people are willing to pay for the product. Human beings will always want to consume some form of entertainment, so it a certain sense it's somewhat vital to have people providing that entertainment. If it's not good entertainment, people won't buy it and it will disappear.
To get this back on track, what these scientists are doing is science purely for the sake of science at this time. This is similar to mathmeticians who prove theorems that aren't of any real practical use. Because this knowledge generally can't be applied to much practical use, it isn't very profitable. At some point in time it might be, but right now it isn't and doesn't serve much of a function to enhance society.
If these people were looking at the moon and wondering if we could grow crops on it, then I'd be all for having money being given to their research because it has potential practical benefits to society. I know there are a lot of people out there who love these non-practical forms of science, but I'd prefer something useful comes out of what is being studied because it will become self-supportive, potentially becoming of use to me or at least not costing me any money to keep the project running.
A healthy skepticism is always a Good Thing, I think.
I haven't read the actual journal article, but I'm sure that the paper is accepted by ApJ because error analysis is performed properly. Or so I hope.
Anyway, what distinguishes this work from others (to me) is that many quantitative values (orbital period, the mass and radius of the planet, etc) are measured via observations. That doesn't happen very often in astronomy these days.
helioquake writes "A collaboration of astronomers discovers possible a 'Rossetta Stone' of planetary formation study,...
Jesus Christ, what the hell does that mean? This isn't grammar Nazism, that sentence is incoherent.
Are they sure it's not just inhabited by geeks?
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Massive variety & complexity sounds more like what I would expect from a universe generated from randomness than intelligent design. Are you sure you're using the same argument that the creationists do?
Scientists don't invoke god(s) to form hypotheses. In science theories are repeatable, testable, falsifiable, and offer predictive value. Since you can't prove that god didn't do it (you can use god to explain anything), a "God Did It" "theory" is not very useful to scientists.
A true scientist/intellectual forms a hypothesis, tests it, and discards it only when it has been conclusively proved to be false
Not "only". It might also be discarded when a better explanation comes along. Scientists don't consider old hypotheses like angels pushing planets across the heavens just because they haven't been disproven. "Angels defy all measurements and observation... but they could still be there, so don't rule it out." God doesn't get any special treatment over angels, demons, fairies, or the great green arkleseizure.
But I still haven't ruled out the possibility of god. That's right. Despite that, scientists will still continue to develop and test for natural explanations for the way the universe works. I hope you at least understand why it's like that, even though it might seem "unfair" to ignore supernatural explanations.
Those non-practical forms of science eventually lead to the practical benefits you're seeking.
Science is inherently not practical. Most of the experiments that lead to the development of products we used today were not cost effective or useful. This is the core difference between a Scientist and an Engineer.
Scientists lay the ground work for the Engineers to "exploit" the behaviors the scientists find. That leads to products or developments on mass scale. If you blindly denounce the initial research as pointless though... guess what... it never gets accomplished, and the advancements/improvements to life/commercially viable products you're so found of never get made.
If man had always followed your advice, we'd still be waiting for a lightning storm to make fire!
Slashdot
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
+1 funny!
Not to be a Grammar Nazi or anything, but that summary made me cringe... By means of a massive core, we discovered a planet? Among other things...
A good analogy to this is the frog in the well. A frog has lived in a deep well all of his life and he has seen many different things outside of his well. Sometimes he sees the blue sky, sometimes he sees clouds, rain, the sun, etc. He has developed a lot of "scientific knowledge" and "philosophy" according to the dimensions and specifications of his well and the elements which affect it. One day another frog comes by who has been all around the world, and tells the frog in the well about the Pacific Ocean. The frog who has been living in the well thinks "How big can the Pacific Ocean be? Is it two times the size of the water in my well? Three times? A hundred times?" Actually, the water in the Pacific Ocean is incomparable to the amount of water in the frog's well. He will never be able to understand it simply because his experience is so limited.
This is the problem with modern day scientists and researchers -- they are like frogs, and the earth is like the well. Our knowledge about the universe is as incomplete as the frog's knowledge of the Pacific Ocean, limited by our own experience here on earth. The size of the universe cannot be ascertained or appreciated, and its wonders can never be fully realized because our senses are so limited.
There is a real musician named Jah Wobble. I doubt any fictional name is going to beat that.
You're not alone in thinking like that. As a matter of fact, you can look back in history and find that, circa 1900, quite a few people shared the same view about the studies of electrons and X-rays as you do today about planets. They thought, "geez, why the hell are we spending on money to study these useless things like electrons and X-rays? What GOOD WOULD THAT EVER DO?"
Now admittedly this may not be exactly the same kind of discovery as electrons. But the idea is the same; we are trying to understand the environment we live in. With hope that will lead us to better and prosperous life in a long run.
While its all well and good to insist that corporations only spend money on things that make a profit - that has never been, and hopefully will never be, the mission of the US government.
Alright, lay it out for me. Anyone.
What is the intelligent design theory? And I mean scientific theory, not layman theory (aka conjecture, wild-ass-guess, hypothesis at best).
What evidence (actual evidence, not human judgement like "looks designed to me!") is there to support it? What science and research can be done with this theory? How can it be falsified? Can experiments can be designed to generate data that supports it? Would it be fair to ask WHY the intelligent designers did everything their way? Think of it as forensic science.
...if we can remove (what, 25% of the Moon's mass, ~2.5% of an Earth mass?), then how many orders of magnitude is that below what it would take for a ringworld, much less a Dyson sphere?
50? 100?
This is way too hardcore.
quick, get the star gate up and running so we can get there before the Gouauld
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
while its size is significantly smaller in diameter
The diameter of a size? And here I thought size had a magnitude only! Does size also have color and texture? How about the speed of its velocity, or the weight of its mass?
If every solar system was habitable, that could be taken as proof that God designed them all to be perfect.
If no other solar system in the universe was habitable, that could be taken as proof that God designed us uniquely as His own children.
This 'shoots down' jack. Short of finding an advanced alien society that built, seeded, and has been monitering this planet, there's nothing space exploration can do to rigorously prove the existence or lack thereof of God.I am an engineer, now atheist but formerly Christian, with several scientific friends who are devout Christians with varying levels of secularism. We all thought that evolution was logical and strict creationism not so, but felt that it was not irrational to feel that God may have watched over and tweaked the universe using its natural laws, including evolution and the Big Bang, as tools.
I guess that belief (formulated long before the term) would probably fall under "Intelligent Design". Should it be taught in schools? Absolutely not. Can it form a rational way to reconcile religious beliefs with scientific realities? Yes.
You take the massive core. You point it at the sky. You look through it. If you're lucky, you discover a planet this way. How hard is that to understand?
They have measured the mass in relation to our frame of reference. It may be that it's just another run-of-the-mill planet from it's own frame, but the difference in velocity makes it seem more massive to us. An orbital period of 2.87 days (from TFA), would make for a tremendous speed.
An interesting aside, the orbit of Mercury was an early proof of Einstein's relativity. The planet varies in speed somewhat during it's trip around the sun. Astronomers had a hard time plotting its orbit mathematically, because it appears to change in mass.
Einstein's special relativity was able to quanitify that change in mass.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
See the subject.
Any word on dual core updates for the planet?
Yeah I haven't read the journal article yet either... But, I would say that being accepted by the ApJ just means that the reviewers couldn't find anything wrong with it. But I am pretty skeptical of the values. The techniques for observing the orbital period and mass are pretty well established, but the measurement of the radius of the planet has me pretty concerned, there are pretty well established methods for doing this with stars, but this planet is *a lot* smaller. I think there is a lot of potential for error there. The radius is just not an easy thing to measure, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if the radius measurement were off by a factor of 3 or 4, or perhaps more. That's the really tricky part I think.
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Also, as for Mercury... Mercury's perihelion advance isn't due to a change in mass from speed variation, it's velocity doesn't vary *that* much. The perihelion advance is actually due to the warping of space-time close to the sun.
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blah blah blah metallic core planet overlords blah blah blah
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
I'm still waiting for the day when we find a teeny star orbiting a giant planet.
This new planet, orbiting around G-star like our Sun (HD 149026), weighs roughly equal to that of Saturn, while its size is significantly smaller in diameter. Planetary modeling suggests that the core of the planet alone must have 70 times more mass than Earth, indicating the possible existence of a metallic solid core inside the planet.
Great! They found Cybertron. It is only a matter of time before the Transformers bring their war to Earth.
Prof. Farnsworth: You see, Vergon 6 was once filled with a super-dense substance known as dark matter, each pound of which weighs over 10,000 pounds.
I sincerely hope it has gold wheels a WRC Blue paint job and a bloody great vent on the front. Oh and Petr Solberg aiming it around those gravity lenses, worse than wet snow...
If I had a few massive cores laying around, could I discover new planets as well?
Just like the rocky planet discovered earlier
You mean Rocky isn't from this planet?
That explains a lot.
If the planet were made of solid gold, would I have to bring it to an earth bank in small chunks to trade it in for cash?
Or do I need to town the whole thing down?
Let me know.
So some planets have candy instead of peanut butter or nougat inside them...interesting.
No luck finding the preprint so far. But here is the thing.
This is a G0 star, so it's likely to have a similar scale size as our Sun. Looking up Simbad, I see that this star is located roughly 80 parsec away, which isn't too far. Now, this new planet. It is 0.72 times the size of Jupiter. So if you take the ratio of apparent discs, it'd be
(pi * (0.72 * 0.7e5km[Jupitar])^2) / (pi * (7.0e5[Sun])^2) ~ 0.005
or 0.5%. So all you need is to achieve +/- 0.1% accuracy in photometry to derive the apparent size...there, easier said than done. No wonder they needed a big telescope to do this accurately.
I think it's doable, though your points are well taken, too. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a factor of two errors.
Saturn is the LEAST dense. So comparing it's density to Saturn to make it sound really dense is sort of silly.
a massive core or are you just happy to see me?
That isn't quite what was happening. The Sun's energy of the Sun's gravitational field is equivalent to some amount of mass. This equivalent mass of the Sun's gravitational field gives rise to a small second order gravitational field that perturbs Mercury's orbit. Actually, it perturbs the orbits of other planets as well but the effect is most noticable with Mercury.
Given the blindspot for Tragedies of the Commons, I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that bringing that much in moon materials here would be outrageously expensive. It would be even harder to breathe with the extra gravity...
But, in response to the GP, it isn't a given that moving stuff off the moon would cause the moon's orbit to change; it depends what the destination is -- it doesn't have to be Earth. You could mine it and use it for something without bringing it here.
If the mass is to be used for a power station placed in lunar orbit, for example, there would likely be no net change. Also, if we had the requisite magical powers, we could split the moon in half and place the halves in opposing orbits, or have four moons, or crumble it down into a continuous ring. There would be no benefit to doing so, but the point is that an orbital balance can be achieved even with large masses. (Not that there wouldn't be other side effects. Replacing the moon with a continuous ring would get rid of tides, which coastal wildlife needs for its survival (particularly coral reef habitats)).
James Dean said "Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today.", which is pretty much the same as your sig.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I agree completley with Andy Gardner. Seeing as how we can't even send people to Mars let alone another planet even further than that, all of this is a waste of time unless scientists plan on documenting everything. This way, when we do develop warp speed engines similar to that of star trek, or Slipstream as the Halo novels put it, we'll be able to mine their resources (and essentially have some alien race mighty pi**ed off at us) Personally, I don't know how much interest I can retain in discovering new planets. To my knowledge, we have found three more in our galaxy -- who knows how many more we know that I was never cued on. That's just the Milky Way alone. I can't imagine how many more we'll find in this infinite space of a universe. Quite frankly, I don't want to, either.